The Mirror of Galadriel — Print & Oil Painting

The basin is the centre of the picture and it has been given real weight. It stands at the lower right on a twisted fluted pedestal that widens into a round base, its bowl broad and shallow with a band of pierced foliate carving running around the outside, and the water inside it sits dead level and black. Nothing is reflected in it yet.

The figure beside it is doing one thing. She stands to the left in a pale gown that falls straight to the floor, her weight even, and she has extended her right arm across the bowl with the hand open and the fingers slightly apart, palm down, just above the surface. She is not touching the water. Her head is turned to follow the hand, and her hair, a heavy strawberry blonde, falls in loose plaited ropes past her waist.

Light in this painting comes from three places and none of them is the sky. There is a cold glow off the water, a soft rim on the gown, and behind her a stand of dark trees hung with pale blue-white lamps, a dozen of them at different heights, each one flaring into a small vertical streak. A flight of shallow stone steps climbs into the dark at the right.

The palette is almost entirely blue-black, and measured brightness is very low, so the picture has to be looked at for several seconds before the garden behind the figure separates into trees, steps, hedges and a low wall. The gown and the hand are the only areas of real light.

One small object confirms that the painter read the chapter. Set on the stone beside the basin is a silver ewer, and in the book that is precisely the equipment: a wide shallow silver bowl, a silver jug standing next to it, water carried up from the stream and poured in, and the lady breathing on the surface before she speaks. The vessel nobody remembers is sitting right there in the corner of the frame. Part of our Lord of the Rings collection, beside a closer portrait of the same lady and the lit pavilions of the wood around her.